Free agency season has died down and while there are still quite a few intriguing names left floating about while teams figure their cap situations out, there's one man out there who remains and his legend now grows as the pickings get slimmer.
His reputation is expanding faster than the universe you might say.
He's a man who has played in the NHL for nine seasons, almost all of them healthy... Except for his most recent when he got injured more seriously just to see how it felt.
Darryl Sutter once traded for him because he was intrigued by how he might work with Jarome Iginla.
His hairless face has experienced more playoff success than the San Jose Sharks.
He's been known to cure a struggling offense just by walking into the room.
If you're the GM of the Coyotes, Panthers, or a host of other NHL teams perhaps you too would be interested in the most interesting free agent in the world.
When Alex Tanguay drinks, he prefers something with an umbrella in it.
Or perhaps you'd just rather have a shitty Mexican beer.
Alex Tanguay is certainly getting a lot of attention and sure, much of it is deserved. He played 50 games for the Canadiens last year and scored 40 points. Not bad. Not great, but not bad either. Teams that are in the hunt for him, the aforementioned Panthers and Coyotes could sure use a big point producer to help out. Florida in particular would make for a great destination with the emerging David Booth and the host of snipers situated in Miami right now.
These teams in the hunt for Alex Tanguay had better know what they're getting though.
They're not getting a big goal scoring winger.
Tanguay is a set-up guy and would fit in ideally on a team that has a center that likes to score goals (well hello Tampa Bay) or on a line with enough offensive talent to make sure that Tanguay's short comings (doesn't play physical at all) don't short-circuit the entire line (Ottawa, Dallas, even Phoenix perhaps).
Alex Tanguay is the ideal support piece for a team's offense but he's not the main event scorer. Of course, now that just about every main event scorer is off the market, Alex Tanguay is the last guy out there who has put up big offensive numbers in the past and will, likely, be able to get (over) paid by someone desperate.
Buyer beware because the Most Interesting Free Agent In The World is a lover not a fighter... But he's also a fighter so don't get any ideas He's a total pansy, have at it.
What makes analyzing the foibles of the power players in the NHL so amusing is that they very often continue to make the same mistakes repeatedly thus dooming franchises to continued failure.
It began a couple weeks ago when the Montreal Canadiens announced that their new head coach would be former Florida Panthers coach and general manager Jacques Martin. Martin, of course, is one of the many contributors to driving the Panthers into the ground over the years before stepping out from behind the bench and hiring former Canadian juniors coach Pete DeBoer.
Of all the bad moves Martin made over the years in Florida, his best move was hiring the very green DeBoer to try and make something out of the deck chairs on his version of the Titanic in Florida. The results? Florida just barely missed the playoffs only losing out in the number of wins compared to the Canadiens who they finished tied with for points in the Eastern Conference.
The way the Panthers were arranged, well, let's just say that some writers out there didn't have a lot of faith for how they were going to do given the apparent lack of talent and throwing a new coach to the wolves with such a rag-tag bunch.
Oops.
So DeBoer does well enough for Bob Gainey to think that hiring Jacques Martin must be a good idea, right? Well, OK some (Four to be exact) Habs fans are at least warming up to it sarcastically. That's not a good sign.
So of course that leads some stupid owners to think, "Well shoot, we've got to get in on this before we lose out on our opportunity to give some failed reject yet another chance to prove why they've lost their job over and over again."
Is it any shock that Dallas Stars owner Tom Hicks is that stupid owner?
In spite of the fanatical drama created last year thanks to the Sean Avery fiasco and Marty Turco's abysmal start to the season, the Dallas Stars rallied to be mostly respectable in a very difficult Western Conference. All of that was petty drama for Stars owner Tom Hicks and new general manager Joe Nieuwendyk as they first fired head coach Dave Tippett and then hired Marc Crawford to replace him behind the bench.
Look out Nelson, Crawford will send Krys Barch after you for laughing at Tom Hicks.
Uh... what? Why Marc Crawford?
He's a guy who was a terrible fit in Los Angeles, wore out his welcome in Vancouver (not to mention his fingerprints being all over the Steve Moore-Todd Bertuzzi situation) and saw his only real success with a team full of superstars in Colorado ten years ago.
Given how soon this decision came down after Joe Nieuwendyk's hiring, there's little doubt here that he's got a plan on how he wants to set the team up and for that, I guess, Nieuwendyk deserves the benefit of the doubt but some of his quotes at the press conference raise some questions for me:
"We went through an extensive process of evaluation, talking through many areas of the organization and evaluating where we were as a club and we believe that Marc has the qualities that we need moving forward. I talked to several former players of Marc's, such as Joe Sakic, Mike Keane and Trevor Linden and they all spoke very highly of Marc."
Well that sounds peachy, but how about the guys in the locker room that you're going to be managing?
"I did not speak to any current Stars players because I don't think any of them have ever played for Marc before."
Oh.
Well there it is, Joe Nieuwendyk rules with an iron fist.
Perhaps this is his subtle way of telling the guys that the sort of rampant semi-mutiny that appeared to roll through the locker room last year (in particular with regard to Avery) won't be tolerated. For that, bringing in a fiery personality like Crawford may actually be a good thing.
After all, given the brand of hockey that Crawford is going to want to play, expect an even bigger role to be played by Steve Ott, someone that Crawford may view as Bertuzzi-esque in his size and physical play. I don't want to do the obvious tie-in with questionable physical play, but Steve Ott makes it kind of easy to do that.
As for some of the other things Nieuwendyk and Crawford will have to contend with, Stars Scene takes a nice peek at the list for them to contend with and one thing in particular gave me pause:
3 – Get a capable backup goalie for Turco
Oooh, I know how to handle this one and I think Marc Crawford will be a really easy sale for it too considering his love of this goaltender is like that of a fat kid and cake.
Dan Cloutier at his best in Vancouver.
Yeah, come on, you know we all want to see Dan Cloutier back in the NHL to serve up some of the most embarrassing goals you've ever seen.
Perhaps Tobias Stephan isn't such a bad idea after all.
After all of that, what does Crawford have to say about the current outlay of the Stars?
"I think that what impresses me so much about the Stars is the tremendous core values that team already has in place. They have a great foundation of habits that I will continue to build upon. You don't lose the strengths of previous coaches and previous regimes, there's still a part of Bob Gainey, still a big part of Ken Hitchcock and huge part of Dave Tippett still with this team and my job will be to add to that moving forward. I'm confident that the strengths I'm going to bring to the team are going to help the Dallas Stars."
There's Bob Gainey's name again. And Ken Hitchcock. I'm sure we'll hear about Dave Tippett landing somewhere else soon enough (New Jersey, perhaps?). I don't know quite what the "core values" of the Dallas Stars are but given how the roster is set up, they apparently value either beating you up (Ott, Krys Barch) or employing diving sissies (Mike Ribeiro) to drive Mike Modano crazy.
The key components of the Stars from this point on should be James Neal, Brad Richards, Brenden Morrow and Marty Turco. The team needs a lot of blueline help and were ravaged by injuries last year along those lines. They lack some serious forward depth while Joel Lundqvist and Loui Eriksson are nice pieces, they need a lot more here.
Rebuilding this team is going to be a tough job and I surely hope that Nieuwendyk is capable of handling it with a crazy overlord of an owner in Hicks watching him and a gamble retread of a coach in Crawford trying to make his pieces work.
A hire like this I'm sure makes the Stars brass feel like they're going to recapture some of the magic but I can't help but think that recycling old blood like Crawford is only going to make things worse.
It's up to Nieuwendyk in the off-season to make sure things don't get out of hand further in Dallas because things could go south fast for Dallas in the meantime, their division isn't exactly a cakewalk anymore.
As bad as Atlanta will seem this year, there's another team in the Southeast Division that is going to make life easier a few times a year for them and for everyone else in the NHL. Behind every positive you might be able to find for the Florida Panthers, there's a large and ominous negative lurking behind it - even at its most basic level.
You'd have to think that playing in Miami, Florida in the middle of winter and making a home there wouldn't be all that bad and that it would serve to motivate players to want to go there. Instead, the Panthers have been irrelevant to the NHL since 2000 when Pavel Bure was single-handedly lifting the Panthers on his back.
The Panthers being in Miami (or Sunrise, FL to be totally exact) play in a market where fans root for the Dolphins 365 days out of the year. Everything takes a backseat to the Fins. Miami has been a blessed market for professional sports having had a normally successful NFL team each year, a recent NBA championship with the Heat and a two-time World Series winner in the Marlins.
The Panthers, however, are the Rodney Dangerfield's of Miami. No respect at all - not that they've done anything to deserve it of late. They got their Stanley Cup Finals appearance in 1996 and got swept out by Colorado and then had only two more playoff appearances to show for it after that in 1997 and 2000.
Now? Hopeful youth has turned sour. Players like Nathan Horton, Stephen Weiss and Jay Bouwmeester have either not followed through fully on expectations or are just playing out the string until it's time to leave. For a stretch, the Panthers actually drafted decently with their top picks. Horton and Weiss are both useful players and Bouwmeester, despite what that THN column above says is a very good defenseman - it's just very difficult to gauge how good they are playing in a hockey vacuum.
For the longest time, or so it seemed, Olli Jokinen was the face of the Panthers, taking the job from John Vanbiesbrouck and Scott Mellanby before him. During the NHL Draft this off-season, he was shipped off to the desert to find more old folks in retirement homes in Phoenix.
While you'd never know nor ever heard it, word came out after the deal that Jokinen was dogging it in Florida and wasn't a leader nor did he have any guts. We shall see how this pans out for both teams as Florida was able to bolster their defense in the deal getting Keith Ballard and Nick Boynton from the Coyotes, but having seen Jokinen play in Olympic competition for a team that was very successful in Team Finland, I can't help but think that Florida is going to get shown up again here, especially with Phoenix being very close to becoming quite good in the Western Conference. If Jokinen is the clubhouse cancer that these gutsy, anonymous NHL executives claim to be, Phoenix is in a world of hurt and Florida's rebound from mediocrity starts now.
That ain't going to happen because the Panthers are awful.
Take a look at this roster and tell me who on this team is going to become an offensive force to carry this team.
Take a look at the team scoring statistics from last year and tell me who is going to step up.
All signs point to Nathan Horton, it appears, but who is going to work with him?
Stephen Weiss? David Booth? Rostislav Olesz?
These guys are all very young. Look at Horton who is the presumtive leader of this team. He's 22 years-old and is going into his fourth full year with the Panthers, fifth overall.
Stephen Weiss is two years older than Horton and has yet to really show if he's worth it. Weiss was the #4 overall selection in the 2001 NHL Entry Draft and his best point season came two years ago (20-28-48).
David Booth is a name to get acquainted with because he'll probably be suiting up in 2010 for Team USA. That said, him playing in Florida is a good way to keep him a secret. Booth is 23 years-old and finally broke out last year scoring 22 goals finishing with 40 points. I know that seems poor, but with the Panthers, he was certainly one of the guys the coach was telling you to keep an eye on.
They signed Cory Stillman away from Ottawa this offseason, but he's a guy that comes in on the backside of his career and, while solid, isn't much of a scorer anymore. That said, he will likely be Horton's left wing and go-to guy. Yup, welcome to Florida.
Yes, that's how bad it's going to be this year. If any team gets lit up by the Panthers this year, I'm demanding that that team's coach work them out immediately after the game Herb Brooks style. You know what I'm talking about...
Yes, the Panthers are that bad. They are the Team Norway of 1980. And yes, they will make someone feel really bad about themselves later on when they manage to steal a win or two.
These guys won't be 1974-1975 Washington Capitals bad, but they'll make you wish for a cyanide soda if you're stuck watching them too often.
The strength of this team is on the blueline and in goal. The two guys they got back for Olli Jokinen are decent and they'll be used to playing defense on a bad offensive team having already played in Phoenix. They added Toronto's headache and whipping boy Bryan McCabe which this year will look really good, but let's face facts, McCabe was brought in as Jay Bouwmeester insurance once he's traded away.
Bouwmeester will again be the best player back there but this is where the good gets wiped out by the bad. Bouwmeester is an unrestricted free agent at the end of the year and while he's said all the right things about waiting to see if the Panthers get it turned around as to whether or not he'll want to come back, don't get lost with it - dude wants to get out of town and get paid.
General Manager Jacques Martin is going to have to know when, exactly, will be the time to pull the trigger on a deal for their best player. If the Panthers want to get anything at all for Bouwmeester, the trading deadline should prove to be a great time to pinpoint when the Panthers actually get their stuff together to turn around the franchise or if they can start gathering their things to move to Las Vegas or Kansas City and call it a day in South Florida.
If the Panthers don't/can't get a premium package for Jay Bouwmeester, it will prove to be a devastating turn of events for this franchise. Martin and the rest of the front office cannot buy the lip service being served up from Bouwmeester. He's leaving Florida regardless of what magic you think you can pull. Trade him, get lots of fun pieces to add to the team and for God's sake, get your head screwed on straight for the draft - if you end up with the #1 pick, you're all set.
If not - start scouting.
Oddly enough, whether injur occurs in goal or not, the Panthers are very much set. Tomas Vokoun and Craig Anderson are both more than capable and with Anderson's success last year while Vokoun was injured, I'm shocked we didn't get any stories out of Florida about looking to deal Vokoun to get cheaper. Since that didn't occur, Vokoun and Anderson will provide some of the lone stability you'll find on the Panthers this year, problem is, will they get any support for their efforts. All signs point to ABSOLUTELY FREAKING NOT.
The Panthers might keep the Thrashers out of last place in the Southeast, but they should prove to be cozy roommates at the bottom of the Eastern Conference standings (and they'll be joined by one other team down at the very bottom of the pile in the East) but Florida is shaping up to perhaps be the very worst of the bunch. They'll need Vokoun and Anderson to be Jennings Trophy winners to be in the race for the playoffs and they'll need all of their youth to have breakout years so they can at least trot out two solid scoring lines.
Every goal scored this year for new head coach Peter DeBoer, fresh off of a championship season with Kitchener in the OHL, is going to have to be worked for even harder than what you'd see from better teams in the NHL. It's clear why DeBoer was brought into this situation in Florida, he's got experience coaching the team enigma Stephen Weiss as well as a couple of other players. They're hoping that his new blood as well as experience with some of these guys will light a fire.
There won't be any fire here though. There won't even be any smoke, sparks, tinder, lighter fluid, gasoline... you get the point.
See you next season Panthers - thanks for not showing up.
It's interesting that in this hockey-centric blog that the word "modesty" is being mentioned at all this time of year. NHL general managers can't wait to get rid of the money the owners make and spend it recklessly on players who may, and likely, may not have earned their new paychecks. A statement like that should be linked with articles talking about such insane money-tossing, but those are too numerous to count right now.
Suffice to say, a guy like Jeff Finger, who only two years ago I was watching carve up the ice in Albany for the AHL River Rats, is now making $3.5 million a year for the Maple Leafs and he hasn't even played 100 NHL games yet nor could he crack the starting lineup more often than not for the Avalanche in the playoffs last year.
But I digress.
I'd like to talk about how Herr Bettman's love of all things American could be put to best use, rather than ripping him for doing so ad nauseum, which I've developed a bit of a penchant for doing.
My source for this inspiration actually derives from a miserable failing of Bettman's former boss and role model, David Stern who recently acted as the hitman for the murder of professional basketball in Seattle.
That's right, the city to a former NBA Champion, the Supersonics won the NBA Championship in 1979, you know, when the NBA was a floundering league that had its title games aired in tape delay on CBS and was overwraught with drug problems.
Seattle's only professional sports championship is courtesy of the Sonics. Seattle also is a big time legitimate city in the United States, at least as far as media market rankings go. Seattle/Tacoma is 14th largest in the United States and has been a city without a professional, NHL-level team since 1924.
Hell, the first American Stanley Cup Champions were the Seattle Metropolitans in 1917.
What's most heinous here is that the main beef for the Sonics shuffling off to the wilds of Oklahoma City (Market size 45 according to Nielsen) is the way Stern has basically told Seattle, "If you ever want to see the NBA again, you'll build us a new arena."
It's this sort of attitude that the NHL and Bettman should take advantage of and work with the city to show that they care and are willing to play the role of the white knight.
During the ridiculous Nashville ownership wranglings, writers and speculators made it a point to pick out different U.S. markets that are interested in and would love to take on NHL franchises. Cities like Las Vegas (thanks to Jerry Bruckheimer's interest in owning a team) and Kansas City (due to the availability of a spacious new 18,000 seat arena) were the places picked out as most logical.
Seattle rarely, if ever, entered into the equation.
Why? Well, it's pretty likely that the answer lies in Canada.
A move to Seattle would, almost assuredly, get the dander up of the Vancouver Canucks owner Francesco Aquilini. Seattle sits 140 miles to the south of Vancouver and Vancouver's claim to the region would be highly challenged putting a team in a large, U.S. market that, the Canucks would argue, watches and loves the Canucks.
I'm sure there are many arguments into the validity of this, but let's face it, 140 miles isn't that far away, a two to three hour drive away at most. Such closeness is surely a great argument in favor of the Canucks keeping their hold over the market and them having any fans leeched away from a team being located in Seattle must be valid.
Wait... what's that? Buffalo and Toronto are only 93 miles apart? Both teams sell out their arenas? They have a thriving rivalry? Toronto fans go out of their way to get tickets in Buffalo to see games there because they're cheaper tickets and easier to land than Leafs tickets? All of these things happen and neither team loses anything being so close?
Huh...
Well then.
So, tell me Gary, why wouldn't you want to do this? Why wouldn't you want to ride in and work out a deal with the city of Seattle to move say... the Florida Panthers or Atlanta Thrashers to Seattle with the help of Starbucks owner and champion of all things Seattle, Howard Schultz? After all, Schultz wants to bring a law suit against the NBA and the owner of the now Oklahoma City NBA franchise, Clay Bennett.
Schultz loves pro sports in Seattle so much, you'd like to think he'd be behind a project to bring a floundering NHL franchise to the city, you know, to fill the void. Think of the marketing potential Gary. Starbucks is the biggest brand of coffee in the world now. Their shops are everywhere, and in the western U.S. there is none bigger to compete with them.
You hear that Gary? A product known worldwide and has a foothold stronger than anything in the Western United States! Think of the potential!
It's been pretty clear that hockey in South Florida is a miserable failure. No, I know Gary, they made the Cup Finals in 1996 and leaving a city that's had a taste of success would be tragic.
What about Atlanta then Gary? They're currently a two-time failure at holding the interest of the fans. Nevermind the fact that Atlanta is a brutally awful professional sports market, this is a place that still finds it necessary to point out the most mundane aspects of hockey to its paying customers by announcing them over the public address.
Yes folks, we know the rules to icing are confusing and maybe the rules to offsides might be a bit hard to understand, but don't worry, the Thrashers PA guy will tell you what it is every time it happens. Brilliant move Gary - you should make sure they stick it out in Atlanta.
If Bettman isn't going to find a way to contract franchises and if he wants to make the right move and play the good guy for once, sweet talk Howard Schultz and tell him there's another sport that plays games between October and June. Tell him there's another way to bring fun to the people of Seattle. Tell him you'll work out a way to help pay for a new arena in Seattle and make sure that the people of Seattle don't have to pay for it.
Be the good guy Gary. Save face on one of your failed southern experiments and send them north. No, not to Canada. Send them to Seattle and resurrect the ghosts of the Metropolitans, much like the NHL did in Ottawa with the Senators.
A fan of old time hockey, at least if the kind they played in the 1980s counts at least. A guy who's fed up with watching the game he loves being handled and managed by folks with the intelligence equivalent to that of the common, everyday puckbunny.
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